He led by 50 meters, then 100, then 150. No one could touch him as he crossed the 800 mark in just over two minutes—right on schedule.

He started to hurt. His lungs and muscles were on fire. He tasted the familiar bitterness of lactic acid on his tongue. He dropped his shoulders and shook out his arms, trying to stay loose as he flew by the 1200 mark.

The crowd chanted his name in a rhythm that matched his steady cadence: “Pat, Pat, Pat, Pat…” Their energy carried him through the final lap. He sprinted through the line and bended over, resting his hands on his shaking knees as he gasped for breath.

As soon as he was able, he looked up at the scoreboard to see his final time. The arena erupted in cheers as it appeared in lights: 4:04.44.

To the average sports fan, it would appear that Casey had fallen just over four seconds short of achieving the fame and prestige that come with running a sub-four-minute mile. But according to the NCAA, the sophomore distance runner from Laurel had become the second Montana native in history to break the four-minute mark in the mile.

Why? Because Bozeman—home to Casey’s school, Montana State University—is located in the heart of the Gallatin Valley at an elevation of about 4,800 feet.

In an effort to keep things fair, the NCAA allows for the adjustment of times run at high altitudes to reflect what an athlete’s performance would have been at sea level. The problem is, fair means different things to different people.

According to the adjustment scale, Casey’s 4:04.44 was the equivalent of a 3:59.17. Theoretically, that means that if he had run the exact same race in the exact same conditions at sea level, he would have run approximately five seconds faster because his lungs, heart and muscles wouldn’t have been working as hard as early.

“As we go to higher altitudes, we have the same percentage of oxygen, but the problem is that the pressure goes down. And as the pressure goes down, that amount of oxygen becomes less than absolute,” says Dr. Steven Gaskill, associate professor in the Health and Human Performance department at the University of Montana.

According to Gaskill, an athlete’s ability to perform is greatly compromised as altitude increases because there is less time for oxygen to diffuse into the blood. This decreases the percentage of hemoglobin that binds to oxygen molecules, which means less oxygen is delivered to the muscles.

“For athletes working at very high intensities, we begin to see decreases in performance probably as low as maybe 3,000 feet,” Gaskill says. “And by the time we get to 6,000 or 7,000 feet, performances are dramatically decreased.”

When there is a shortage of oxygen in the blood, the body is forced to do more anaerobic work, which leads to an excess of lactic acid. The lactic acid must be buffered in the blood, which leads to a build-up of carbon dioxide molecules. That build-up is what causes breathing distress, Gaskill says.

“You feel like you’re breathing harder, and you are breathing harder. You’re ventilating more air,” Gaskill says. “But it’s not really because you need more oxygen, or because it’s going to help increase your oxygen—it’s because you’re feeling more CO2.”

Basically, the body is working harder to sustain a pace at altitude than it would be working to sustain the same pace at sea level. Athletes tend to be very in tune with their bodies, and they usually notice the difference quickly.

“You’re used to pacing at a certain speed,” Gaskill says. “But just a teeny, teeny bit of lactic acid, which our body is used to getting rid of [at lower elevations] will create that heavy feeling in the muscles.”

According to Gaskill, the body has only one solution to this problem. “You have to slow down,” he says. “If you don’t, you pay the price at the end of the race.”

The NCAA recognizes that distance runners competing at altitude are at a significant disadvantage. To remedy the time discrepancy between races held at sea level and those held at altitude, a certain number of seconds are subtracted from times run at altitude based on how high the race is run. Gaskill said the adjustment tables originated from both scientific theory and the reality of what has happened to various athletes over the years.

“The adjustment times, I can guarantee you, are right on the average that people will run, but some people handle altitude quite well,” Gaskill says. “It’s a little bit dependent on ventilations, and everyone is a little bit different. Some people won’t have to slow down as much at altitude, and some people will have to slow down a little bit more.”

That problem lies at the heart of the controversy surrounding altitude adjustment. Some members of the running community question the accuracy of the adjustment tables, saying it isn’t right to credit athletes like Casey with times they haven’t actually run.

MSU/Kelly Gorham

Casey’s coach, Dale Kennedy, has spent 28 years coaching track and field at MSU, 10 of those as head coach. Over the years, he said he has run into coaches who don’t believe in the adjustment system. “Track coaches are funny people,” he says. “You get them in a room and they can’t agree on anything, except the fact that they disagree.”

When his team has the opportunity to travel to big collegiate meets at sea-level venues, Kennedy says he sometimes tries to convince other coaches to bring their teams up to Bozeman for a meet. He seldom has any takers.

“I’ve found coaches at sea level who don’t believe [in altitude adjustment],” Kennedy says. “They don’t get it until they go there, but they rarely do that because they know they’ll be slower. They don’t want to come here because they know they’ll be slower.”

Generally, though, Kennedy said most coaches have bought into the altitude adjustment system.

“It gives kids in the Mountain Region the opportunity to qualify for the national championships without having to travel to sea level,” he says, noting that without the adjustment, Casey would not have been eligible to compete at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field National Championships last March.

“To meet the standard without the adjustment, Pat Casey would have had to be capable of running a 3:56 mile at sea level just to qualify, and that’s way better than anyone in the country,” Kennedy says.

Although most competitive racing circuits, college and otherwise, accept altitude-adjusted times as qualifying marks, most do not consider them for records. Even the Big Sky Conference, in which six of nine schools are located at elevations high enough to warrant adjustment, does not allow altitude-adjusted times in the record books.

That, said Gaskill, is because records are often broken by fractions of a second. The margin of error associated with adjustments based on averages, coupled with cardiovascular variations among individual athletes, could, in some cases, produce slightly overadjusted times. Those small overadjustments could be the difference between a record falling or standing.

“Records get down to tenths of seconds, and that’s why they don’t altitude adjust records,” Gaskill says. He adds that altitude-adjusted records would likely take away from an athlete’s sense of accomplishment. “Every athlete I know, they want their record to be real, not scientifically adjusted,” he says.

Casey knows exactly what Gaskill is talking about. If the Big Sky Conference allowed altitude-adjusted times as records, Casey’s 3:59.17 would have made him the conference record-holder in the men’s mile.

Even though Casey believes in altitude adjustment, he feels a little uneasy about claiming 3:59 as his personal best time. “I think the adjustments are pretty close to actual time, but all of my friends and even my dad were like, ‘You’ve got to do it at sea level,’” he says.

Casey says he’s gotten some negative feedback following all the hype about the Montana kid who broke four minutes in the mile. Comments posted on popular running websites have questioned the legitimacy of his altitude-adjusted time.

Gaskill acknowledges that there are valid points on both sides of the altitude feud. “That becomes, really, an academic argument,” he says. “Was that a four-minute mile? Well, of course it isn’t a four-minute mile. But it’s altitude-adjusted, and it will always say that in the books, too.”

“There is no perfect solution, but I would argue that we should probably maintain the system,” Gaskill says. “The best athletes are going to qualify for the NCAA Championships, and the final equalizer is that race. And in the end, the best athletes tend to win.”

And as every runner knows, a champion is a champion. No adjustment required.

Brooke Andrus is a journalism student and track and cross country athlete at the University of Montana. She wrote this article as her final paper for her sports reporting class.